$hit From My Wife's Kitchen

So Karolyn texted me earlier in the day yesterday with, "Shrimp pasta primavera (will have to spend $) or chicken scampi over Parm rice?" Two things came to mind, first we had chicken sandwiches the day before (AMAZING) and "SHRIMP". So I voted on the shrimp pasta primavera. . .but let's face it.  There's really no wrong answer to that question.  The shrimp was paired with a cavatapi pasta, we've found that cavatapi does a really good job of holding sauce so you don't get a single bite that is dry, and for veggies we had zucchini, carrots, and bell peppers.  She made it a little creamier and "parm-ier" than last time, which made it perfect to sop up with a bread from the bakery with butter slathered on it.  Absolutely delicious.  A long with it we had a ceaear salad (salad kits are wonderful timesavers)

Do you want you Monday night dinner to be a dining experience?  Then this is the answer.  Herb De Provence Chicken is tender, juicy and has layers of flavor.  What Karolyn did was to add a teaspoon of baking soda to the spice rub and put that on the trimmed and sliced chicken about four hours earlier.  The sauce is a Dijon cream sauce and it is glorious, we substituted chicken broth for the wine.   As a side note, for any chicken that you get that may have a woody texture, rubbing one teaspoon of baking soda on it 20 minutes prior to cooking will get rid of that texture.  If you haven't experienced woody chicken yet, count yourself lucky.  We had it paired with seasoned roasted potatoes and steamed asparagus. (Edited: I was wrong there is no dill involved )  Here is the link to the recipe we used;  longbournfarm.com/herbs-de-provence-chicken/

There are several styles of the jalapeno poppers out there. Around 2010 I found a variation called the atomic buffalo turd, from a BBQ website.  BBQaddict, if I remember correctly. We made them, but I found myself wanting more.   So here's what we did.  Let the cream cheese soften and added minced green onion, minced chives, onion powder, garlic powder, a bourbon smoked salt (yes, it's amazing) and some smoked paprika.  Fold and incorporate the spices into the cream cheese, next take the lil smokey sausages and quarter them long ways and then chop them up.  Essentially dicing them.  Throw those into the cream cheese along with a handful of a Mexican blend four cheese shred and fold to incorporate.   Shuff all that goodness into a sturdy ziplock bag, massage it a bit and work the filling down to one corner of the bag.  Clip the corner, make sure you cut a hole big enough for the sausage bits to get out or you'll ha...

First order of business,  the name of the Blog is The Wife's idea, so don't bother.   Second order of business, I have no idea what I'm doing here, so have some patience. Third order of business, let's talk about food!        The meal: Bacon Wrapped Chicken Lollipops; Atomic Buffalo Turds (you heard me) and Deviled Egg Macaroni Salad.  A leafy green salad was prepared, then promptly laughed at by all six of the diners.  Today I'm only going to talk about the chicken.   Yes, they looked that good in real life. Yes, they tasted as good as they looked. No, we don't have anymore to share.  How we did it: We thawed out a large package of chicken thighs, "lollipopping" them(a video demonstrating the technique is available online) and cut off the end joints to make it easier than trying to pull everything over.  In hindsight, we'd probably go through the effort to pull it over the knuckle instead of cutting it off.  As ...